Audiotext personal ad services are a popular way for people to meet, and are available in most newspapers and on many cable television systems. In a typical service, an advertiser calls a live operator and places a text personal ad. An advertiser then calls an audiotext system and records an audio message, often referred to as a greeting, which expands upon the advertiser's text ad by describing in more detail the advertiser and the type of person he is seeking. Personal ads are then published in a newspaper. A personal ad includes a 900 telephone number and an ad mailbox number permitting a caller to listen to an advertiser's voice greeting. A caller can respond to an ad by recording a reply voice mail message for the advertiser. An advertiser retrieves a message by calling the audiotext system and entering a password given at the time of ad placement. In another format, live operators are not used. Instead, an advertiser first records an audio greeting via a telephone. An operator then listens to the audio greeting off-line and writes a text summary of the audio greeting for publication in the newspaper.
With the expansion of the Internet and other on-line services, personal ad services have been created to take advantage of this new medium. A typical service allows an advertiser to place a text personal ad that is published on the Internet on an HTML (HyperText Markup Language) page. An Internet user may respond to a personal ad by sending an advertiser a message via electronic mail. The limitation of this approach is that an Internet user cannot listen to an audio recording of an advertiser, a feature that is central to audiotext personal ad services. Another limitation is that many people do not have Internet access, thus limiting the number of advertisers and respondents.
In another format, an attempt is made to integrate audiotext personal ad services with the Internet. Using this approach, personal ads are published in both the newspaper and on the Internet. Each personal ad includes a 900 telephone number and an ad mailbox number permitting a caller to listen to an advertiser's voice greeting. This approach still has the disadvantage of not allowing an Internet user to listen to an advertiser's voice greeting via the Internet. Moreover, an Internet user can only respond to a personal ad via a telephone because this approach does not allow Internet users to exchange messages with telephone users.
To summarize, existing Internet personal ad services are limited in that they lack many of the features available on audiotext personal ad services. Also, existing personal ad services do not provide a means for those using an audiotext personal ad service to effectively communicate with those using an Internet personal ad service and vice versa. Therefore, there is a need for a personal ad system that seamlessly integrates an audiotext system with an Internet server, allowing straightforward communication between those using a telephone and those using the Internet. Such a system has been disclosed in detail by the applicant in pending application Ser. No. 08/744,879. However, there still remains the need to address some of the problems inherent in an integrated audiotext and Internet based personal ad service.
A basic problem is that when a person responds to a personal ad via a telephone, she must give the advertiser a way to be contacted. Similarly, when a person responds to a personal ad via the Internet, she must also give a way to be contacted. This typically consists of leaving a telephone number, street address, or electronic mail address. Many people are reluctant to give out this information to the advertiser. They prefer to be able to communicate anonymously with an advertiser until they are comfortable with giving out contact information. Therefore, the need arises for a system that allows respondents to instantaneously create a private mailbox at the point of responding to an ad. This feature must also support seamless communication between telephone users and Internet users.